A GOOD JOKE IS SOMETIMES THE ONLY THING NEEDED FOR A GOOD LAUGH ON TV.
SOMETIMES THE ONLY THING NECESSARY FOR A GOOD LAUGH IS A GOOD JOKE
In the latest edition of their annual television issue — available this week — New York magazine critic Matt Zoller Seitz makes a strong argument that TV has entered the age of the comedy. Or, well, the “comedy in theory,” anyway.
He suggests that many of our best shows these days, from Orange is The New Black ( new season out this weekend!) to You’re the Worst; Silicon Valley to Catastrophe; and Transparent to Crazy Ex- Girlfriend, approach their topics with an ostensibly comedic bent, but find something deeper and trickier to say about the human condition.
To my mind, this seems like a trend that’s half the result of things that are actually happening, and half a change in audience attitude. The explosion of television production, especially in places that have no particular legacy to push against, has led to more shows taking more chances. Traditional formats are being abandoned, and shows are left to live in their own unique spaces with the hope that the relatively small audience that’s needed to keep something on the air will follow.
At the same time, there has always been smart, deep comedy, it’s just tended to get the short shrift. Plenty of people just want a laugh, and are happy to let the trickier implications of something sail over their heads, or just not bother with something that demands a critical viewing in the first place.
I’ve always been an advocate for the ability of comedy to get at the problems of our world in much more intricate ways than drama, and I’m all for more people expecting that out of their comedy. At the same time, though, there is absolutely nothing that gives me more pure joy than comedy that has absolutely nothing more on its mind than pure silliness.
Which brings me to Another Period, debuting its second season Wednesday night.
It is not entirely fair to say Another Period has nothing else on its mind. Created and written by Riki Lindhome and Natasha Leggero, it’s essentially a parody of life- of- the- rich- and- famous reality shows set at the beginning of the 1900s.
As such, there’s a nice underlying theme of history as only ever being good for rich white men, although even that is slightly subsumed in the wider point that humanity of every stripe is always happy to take down humanity of every other stripe. Like the recently departed Children’s Hospital, the organizing principle of both the show and most of its jokes is that people are just the absolute worst.
What that observation may lack in depth, it more than makes up for in opportunity for unalloyed ridiculousness. Another Period is very much in the vein of Airplane!-style firing jokes at the wall and assuming some of them will land, though with the much more profane streak modern cable comedy demands: so Leggero’s prissy tyrant of an heiress is named Lillian Abigail Hitler Schmemmerhorn-Fish, and Lindhome’s absolute dunce (Beatrice Tiffani Amber Thiessen Downsy) goes back and forth between being unable to recognize a servant when she puts a different dress on and reciting mathematical theories that have not even been invented in their time.
There are more proximate comedic influences, too. From Drunk History — director Jeremy Konner co-created that equally silly series — it gets not only its taste for historical irony — Ben Stiller shows up as Charles Ponzi, who has a lust for Lillian and an investment opportunity — but Paget Brewster as a smack find/matriarch Dodo. Michael Ian Black and David Wain of The State/ Wet Hot American Summer have prom- inent roles, and you can see their influence through the straight-faced absurdity throughout, whether it’s in a secret affair that features a team of servants undressing a couple talking about how very alone they are, or in Beatrice’s repeated breakdowns at the thought of someone else marrying her brother.
Ian Black might even be the best part of the show, playing a steadfast butler whose only response to endless abuse is to try to serve the family better, going so far as to demand a new dusting regimen while he dies of consumption in an iron lung.
At the centre of this ridiculousness, though, are Leggero and Lindhome, and they do an admirable job of not offering a single straight man to bog any of this down. Everything about them is horrible and absurd, which radiates its way through the cast. Leggero is particularly good at entitled self-delusion, on display when she arranges her own kidnapping to outshine an abducted baby who has been grabbing the gossip headlines she wants for herself, or creating a cape made out of dead puppies to adorn the dog of a society rival she’s sucking up to. Lindhome is perfectly clueless, and dives into stuff like painting her face with beets and pretending to be a toddler with a sort of reckless abandon.
None of it is really anything other than a laugh, but that’s what makes the series so fun and anarchic. Sometimes the only thing necessary for a good laugh is a good joke.